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Subject:	FLASH: Supporting Flash Player 4 on your site
From:	Eric J. Wittman
Date:	Mon, 24 May 1999 18:43:58 +0100

Hello fellow FlashRs, by now I am sure you have heard the great news, Flash
4 is officially announced (http://www.flash.com).

With this new release comes a lot of great new features (MP3, Text Fields,
new Actions, improved authoring UI, Publish, etc.). Upgrades will begin
shipping in mid-June and you can pre-order your copies now. For a look at
the new features, check out the cool feature tour at:
(http://www.macromedia.com/software/flash/productinfo/features/)

We have also released a public beta version of the new player to support the
above features. We have noticed that some sites are not compatible with the
new player because of the detection code deployed specifies a absolute
version of Flash Player and not a version equal to or greater than. Because
of this, a TechNote has been written with an example of new detection code
that can be used. We hope you find this helpful.

Best,

Eric J. Wittman
Product Manager, Flash

Flash 4 Detection Technote
----------------------
Problem: I'm using JavaScript to detect whether the Flash 3 plug-in is
installed but it does not detect the new Flash 4 plug-in

Solution:

You have probably hard coded your JavaScript detection to check for the
Flash Player version 3.

if (navigator.mimeTypes &&
navigator.mimeTypes["application/x-shockwave-flash"] &&
navigator.mimeTypes["application/x-shockwave-flash"].enabledPlugin &&
navigator.plugins && navigator.plugins["Shockwave Flash"]) {
// Flash 3 or later is available
} else {
// Flash 3 is not available
}

Note that the test for navigator.plugins["Shockwave Flash"] is true for
Flash 3 and all future versions. The easiest way to create an HTML page to
contains this correct code is to use AfterShock.

If you build a web site that requires Flash Player version 4, you need to
explicity check the version number as shown below. Note how it checks for
version numbers >= 4.

var plugin = (navigator.mimeTypes &&
navigator.mimeTypes["application/x-shockwave-flash"]) ?
navigator.mimeTypes["application/x-shockwave-flash"].enabledPlugin : 0;
if ( plugin &&
parseInt(plugin.description.substring(plugin.description.indexOf(".")-1)) >=
4 ) {
// Flash 4 or greater is available
} else {
// Flash 4 is not available
}

The easiest way to create this code is to use the new publish Feature in
Flash 4.

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